Education cuts protested at Capitol rally

By Ralph K.M. Haurwitz | AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
March 24, 2012

Sherry Dana's reason for joining a rally protesting cuts in public education spending was summed up by a quote from the Italian poet Dante on a cloth bag slung over her shoulder:
"The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality."

As far as the retired Austin teacher is concerned, this is no time for neutrality.
"We want kids to be educated," she said. "It makes this a better country."

Leaders of the Save Texas Schools coalition said more than 4,500 teachers, administrators, students and parents from across the state participated in Saturday's rally at the Capitol and march leading up to it. Capitol police estimated the turnout at 1,000. Either way, the crowd was energetic and peaceful under mostly blue, sunny skies.

A coalition rally last spring drew thousands more because of heightened interest during one of the Legislature's regular sessions, which take place in odd-numbered years. But the Republican-led Legislature, grappling with a gaping budget hole, wasn't dissuaded from reducing by $4 billion the amount owed to school districts in the two-year budget.

Lawmakers sliced an additional $1.3 billion from grant programs, including full-day pre-kindergarten and help for students struggling to pass high-stakes standardized tests.
Speakers and attendees at Saturday's rally said the way to turn things around is by voting out the budget-cutters. They stopped short of endorsements but occasionally criticized Republicans in general and GOP Gov. Rick Perry in particular.

"Cutting school funds is a Perry bad idea," read one sign.

The cuts have forced many school districts, including Austin's, to trim payrolls. Statewide, districts have 25,286 fewer employees this year than last year, including 10,717 fewer teachers, said Debbie Ratcliffe, a spokeswoman for the Texas Education Agency.

Hundreds of districts have sued the state, challenging the constitutionality of the school finance system.

The Save Texas Schools coalition wants lawmakers to restore funding and limit what it considers excessive standardized testing. The coalition also wants funding restored for higher education, which saw a reduction of nearly $1 billion.

"We just have to get them to do the right thing," said Carolyn Bruton, a librarian in San Antonio. "The right thing is to make sure each child has an equal education with the right funding."

State Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, said it's important to send a message "to those in control of the state" that many middle-class people believe "Texas can do better."

One of those in control, the governor, told the American-Statesman last month that the state is spending plenty on public education. "The issue is, are we spending enough money in the right places? Are we getting a good return on our investment?" Perry said.

Proponents of limited government spending said Texas should stay in belt-tightened mode.

"I'm confident that further cuts can be made without adversely affecting student performance or without adversely impacting students or teachers," said Peggy Venable, Texas director of Americans for Prosperity.

Lawmakers, Texans focus on school funding

This is just a start. We can study adequate funding all we want but at the end of the day it boils down to who is going to be there to fight and ensure that what we know needs to be invested is budgeted for. This is not just the responsibility of the people but of legislators that go into communities campaigning on education yet expend very little capital taking on the hard issues when they're on the table.

On September 24, 2011 at the Texas Tribune Festival there was a panel called "How to Pay for Public Education" where a very important exchange between Senator Dan Patrick (co-chair of the Senate Public Education Committee) and Representative Scott Hochberg (co-chair of the House Committee on Public Education). That conversation went something like this:

Sen. Patrick argued that what it costs to educate a student has yet to be defined, especially given the number of "different" students (i.e., 4.8 million students) with "different price tags"

Rep. Hochberg rejected that notion saying that the state had spent $1 million to "study," prior to Sen. Patrick's time, examining what it costs to educate based on those districts that are successful with the kids across the groups that were identified (e.g., low-income group, the kids with different language ability, etc.).

The findings showed that adequate funding and weights were much greater that what the state was currently spending. The legislature's response, according to Rep. Hochberg was: "we [legislators] frankly looked at it and said we don’t have the money to do that."

Rep. Hochberg's following argument was that it's not enough for the state to prioritize putting dollars into education (backhanding Sen. Patrick's comment that public and higher education combined account for 50% of the state budget with a quick "so what!?") but that attention needs to consider how dollars are being prioritized within education.

In this framing, questions such as where, or to who, public education dollars are going to can now be part of the discussion. Many of you who are familiar with the House Public Education hearing on House Bill 500 during last year's session know that Rep. Hochberg was trying to air some of this out.

A lot to unpack when it comes to these issues, friends.

-Patricia


by Gary Scharrer | San Antonio Express-News
02/29/2012

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and House Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, announced the creation of a joint interim committee to study the public school finance system, which likely will be meeting later this year as a state district court hears another school finance lawsuit.

The committee, created through Senate Bill 1 last summer, will study the state’s public school finance system and make recommendations to the 83rd Legislature, which will meet starting in January.

In a statement, Dewhurst said: “The future of Texas is being forged in our classrooms every day. That is why the Texas Legislature remains dedicated to continuing our investment in public education, directing more resources to the classroom and improving the quality of learning for every student in every school and every district across our state.”

Straus said: “Nothing will make a greater difference in the future of our state than the willingness of all Texans to put education first and truly make it our top priority in Texas, and I’m pleased to appoint members to this Select Committee to do so.”

Critics, however, contend that lawmakers have not made public education a priority. The GOP-controlled Legislature last year cut $5.4 billion from public education, which public schools would have gotten under existing law.

A Save Texas Schools rally featuring parents, teachers and students is scheduled March 24 at the Capitol.

“Statewide we’ve seen larger class sizes, lack of instructional materials, and loss of programs to help struggling students succeed,” said Linda Bridges, Texas AFT president. “Parents, students and teachers on March 24 will again send a loud message that we plan to fight for our kids and that we can do better for them and our state’s future. Last year we gathered by the thousands to protest these cuts but were rebuffed by some politicians who claimed that schools would do just fine, that the planned cuts would be absorbed outside the classroom. That story line didn’t fool us then, and it doesn’t wash now as we look at what thousands of school employees and hundreds of superintendents have told us in surveys.”

Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio, will seve on the committee. Van de Putte’s district includes the Edgwood ISD, which is the name plaintiff in the 1984 landmark school finance case.

“I’ve had to learn a thing or two about school finance. I’ll be glad to put that knowledge to good use,” Van de Putte said.

“It is my sincere hope that this interim’s committee will take meaningful action, rather than simply going through the appearance of acting for our public schools and waiting for the courts to tell us what to do,” Van de Putte said. “We must not just have more conversations about how we fund our schools. We need solutions. What we are doing now is not working and, for our students’ sake, we cannot waste any more time.”

About 92 percent of respondents in a recent Texas AFT survey noted layoffs in their district, with a large percentage reporting loss of teachers (85 percent) and teacher assistants (79 percent). A subsequent survey of 241 superintendents released in January reported actual numbers of layoffs, indicating the loss of more than 30,000 teachers and other school employees statewide by conservative estimate.

“This isn’t just about cutting band trips or football awards banquets,” Bridges said. “Laying off teachers means cramming more kids into each class and the loss of the individualized attention our diverse population of students requires. Eliminating pre-K grants means that kids don’t get the foundation in learning that they desperately need. Wiping out tutorials and services like the Student Success Initiative means more kids won’t meet increasingly rigorous achievement standards, or will simply drop out altogether.”

Four lawsuits have been filed in recent months by various school groups, alleging the state is shortchanging education.

Dewhurst appointed Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, as joint chair of the school finance committee. Members include: Sens. Bob Deuell, R-Greenville; Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock; Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa, D-McAllen; Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound; Dan Patrick,, R-Houston; Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo; Carlos Uresti, D-San Antonio; Royce West, D-Dallas; Tommy Williams, R-The Woodlands and Van de Putte.

Straus appointed Rep. Jimmie Don Aycock, R-Killeen, as joint chair of the committee. The committee members include: Representatives Alma Allen, D-Houston; Rafael Anchia, D-Dallas; Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands; Ryan Guillen, D-Rio Grande City; Donna Howard, D-Austin; Dan Huberty, R-Houston; Susan King, R-Abilene; Todd Smith, R-Euless; Vicki Truitt, R-Keller; and Mike Villarreal, D-San Antonio.

DISD Says It's Not Sitting on Federal Funds. It's Actually Trying to Keep From Wasting Them

Here's the TEA's response to DISD.

-Patricia

By Robert Wilonsky | Dallas Observer
Tue., Feb. 7 2012

We started this morning by noting Brett Shipp's piece from last night suggesting the Texas Education Agency is threatening to withhold Dallas ISD from close to $80 million in federal funds birthed by No Child Left Behind. The reason, says Commissioner of Education Robert Scott: Only 40 students out of an eligible 29,349 have gotten their after-school tutoring paid for. Which, on the surface, sounds just horrible.

But DISD says today that's far from the whole story. Like, very far. Like, not even half the whole story. More like a couple of chapters from a really long story.

As proof we were sent the January 27 letter interim DISD superintendent Alan King sent to Scott in response to his January 13 warning letter on which Shipp based his account last night. In the letter, which follows, King writes that the reason DISD hasn't spent the money is because while performing its annual audit the district discovered "potential irregularities involving invoices received from several vendors" -- all of whom, incidentally, are tutoring services approved by TEA. Writes King, who later outs the issue as one involving double-billing, "the district took immediate action by reorganizing the department in charge of oversight for the program and hired a forensic team to conduct further investigations into the program."

King writes that district staff and TEA employees chatted about this in October, and that the result was an "action plan" that would resolve the hold-up. In the meantime, DISD continued trying to find out where the irregularities had come from -- inside 3700 Ross or with the contractors TEA had signed off on. Says the letter:

The initial concerns were that district employees were being paid by both the district and vendors for the same work or tutors were being paid by multiple vendors for the same time period. The District's Office of Professional Responsibility conducted a sampling of interviews with several district employees and found no indication of employee misconduct. The District, therefore, concluded that the apparent fraudulent activity was conducted by the vendors and the forensic audit team focused their procedures on these vendors.

Now here's where it gets really interesting ...

Not only is DISD concerned that those tutoring services are double-dipping from federal funds, but the district also doesn't think much of those tutoring services -- all of whom, you'll recall, are on TEA's list of approved vendors. This isn't easy to find. But there is a report, which you'll find here, that breaks down the services providers, which have names like Allegiance Learning Solutions, Cool Kids Learn, Cranium Maximus, Little Genius Private Learning, Orion's Mind and Sheila Williams Lyons: Acknowledge Me Now. According to the district, most of the 11,268 kids who enrolled in the tutoring services used Group Excellence (2,695 students), Apex Academics (1,593) or Tutors with Computers (1,129). And the district "funded SES at $1,490 per student," per the report.

But, says DISD's evaluation, it didn't appear to get much, if anything, for its investment. From Page 80 of the report:

For TAKS math vertical score means, SES eligible non-tutored students outperformed SES tutored students in the sixth grade by an average of 21 points. There was no significant difference between tutored and non-tutored students' vertical math scores in the seventh and eight grades. For TAKS reading, SES eligible non-tutored students outperformed SES tutored students in all three grades by an average of 17 points.

Eleven pages later, after a lot of data-crunching, the district determined:

In a broader sense, SES is a clear non-factor in helping students pass the TAKS that otherwise might not pass. When examining the rates between enrolled and non-enrolled (and tutored and nontutored), SES is not helping students who previously failed the TAKS test to pass this year, and there-in help schools make AYP. This is probably due in part to the fact that the majority of SES participants have previously passed the TAKS test and the fact that many providers are apparently not able to improve student academic performance.

Which brings us back to King's letter, in which he notes that the district's actually requested a waiver from TEA to "repurpose the mandatory set aside for SES services to a more productive initiative." Because, as the report notes, DISD doesn't think SES is very, you know, productive. Writes King:

The District will set aside approximately $10 million to hire teachers at Stage 2 and above AYP campuses in order to lower class sizes. Since all 26 campuses that meet this criterion are "school-wide", allocations will be distributed evenly across the affected campuses. Teachers will be hired according to the specific area of improvement of each campus. The improvement areas are math, reading, attendance and/or graduation rate. This proposal will allow the District to hire approximately 166 teachers or 6.4 additional teachers per campus.

TEA spokesperson DeEtta Culbertson says the agency is "assessing the letter" from King, but since there's an "ongoing investigation, there's not a whole lot we can say." But "the bottom line is," she adds, "we need to make sure the students in Dallas ISD are being properly served."

Little Agreement on How to Fix School Finance System

by Ben Philpott | Texas Tribune
February 3, 2012

A teachers group has urged Gov. Rick Perry to call a special session to address education funding, but there's still plenty of disagreement on what fixing the school funding system would actually mean.

Some think lawmakers should eliminate the use of local property taxes and pass a constitutional amendment to create a statewide property tax. Others want a more immediate fix: Spend a couple of billion dollars to stop additional teacher layoffs — and call lawmakers back to Austin to do so.

“State government has the money to do that — it’s taxpayers’ money, called the Rainy Day Fund,” said Rita Haecker, president of the Texas State Teachers Association.

Haecker said at a news conference Wednesday that without that stopgap money, schools could be forced to continue slashing jobs.

“An estimated 32,000 school employees, including 12,000 teachers, already have lost their jobs,” she said.

Bill Peacock with the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation disagrees. “There are a lot of people calling for a special session, but we don’t see the need for one,” Peacock said.

Peacock said the Rainy Day Fund should only be used for one-time costs, not recurring expenses like teacher salaries. He said adding another patch to the heavily bandaged school finance system won't help anyone.

On that point, the Equity Center, a nonprofit group that advocates for middle- and low-income school districts, agrees. But it's focused on a big-picture fix to the system.

The center's Lauren Cook says lawmakers can do that by simply following the state's current education code.

"It should finance schools in a thorough and efficient way so that all students have the same opportunities,” she said, “and so that taxpayers that pay substantially similar rates are receiving substantially similar revenue in their school districts."

While Cook seeks equity, Peacock and his crew are searching for efficiencies, like letting parents pick the type of education their children receive.

“Vouchers, public school choice, virtual education — with technology these days, there’s a whole lot of things that one could do to improve the efficiency and put more competition into the system of public schools and public education you have in Texas,” Peacock said.

Neither the Texas Public Policy Foundation nor the Equity Center thinks lawmakers will take up major changes to school finance until they are forced to do so by the Texas Supreme Court. And that's not expected until the 2013 legislative session is over.

Teachers seek special session to stop school cuts

Gary Scharrer | Houston Chronicle
February 1, 2012

Gov. Rick Perry should call Texas legislators back to the Capitol for a special session to spare more public school cuts next year now that the economic recovery is producing more revenue than expected, a teachers group said Wednesday.

The state ended the 2011 budget year with a $1.1 billion surplus, Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin, noted and the current budget cycle is expected to produce another $1.6 billion surplus.

Perry should ask lawmakers to tap into the state’s $7.3 billion rainy day fund to avoid more school layoffs and larger class sizes next year, Howard and Texas State Teachers Association President Rita Haecker said.

The Republican-controlled Legislature last year cut $5.4 billion from public education for the current two-year budget, which forced school districts to cut about 32,000 school employees, including 12,000 teachers, Haecker said.

More than 8,200 elementary classes are larger than the cap set by state law.
“It is time to stop the bleeding and stop the cuts, now,” she said.

There’s little likelihood that Perry will call legislators into a special legislative cuts to spare more school cuts next year.

“There are no plans to call a special session on this or any other issue. Thanks to Gov. Perry’s fiscally conservative leadership Texas has a balanced budget and has increased funding to Texas public schools by billions of dollars,” Perry spokeswoman Allison Castle said.

Howard passed an amendment last year that would have sent money to school districts to help fund the annual 80,000-student enrollment increase if the Rainy Day Fund passed a certain threshold. But the amendment got stripped from the final bill.

The willingness to cut more education funding instead of using surplus tax revenue will become a campaign issue this year, both Haecker and Howard said.

“We need to hear from parents across the state,” Howard said.

The state’s future workforce and economic develop hinge on a better education population, both Howard and Haecker said.

Education cuts, they said, send a wrong message about the priority of education.

“You can sense in our community their frustration and anger. You will see their willingness to take a role in changing the outcome of this,” Haecker said.

The Texas State Teachers Association will be circulating petitions, urging Perry to call a special session.

UT-Austin Prepares for Fight Over Tuition Increases

by Reeve Hamilton | Texas Tribune
January 5, 2011

A group of students taking their cues from the Occupy movement wants the University of Texas System regents to know they won’t take tuition increases without a fight.

At a meeting in front of UT’s iconic tower tonight, the students will settle on a final version of a protest document they hope sparks a larger pushback against the growing cost of higher education.

If 2011 was a rough year for higher education, and UT in particular, the burgeoning Occupy UT group — which takes its name and inspiration from the worldwide phenomenon that began last year — might be an indication that 2012 may not be any easier. One assured flashpoint: how and how high tuition is set.

Forces on both the left and right of the political spectrum are already preparing for battle.

Toward the end of 2011, UT President Bill Powers concurred with recommendations from the university’s Tuition Policy Advisory Committee, made up of students, faculty and administrators, to ask the University of Texas System Board of Regents to increase tuition by 2.6 percent each of the next two years. That’s the maximum the regents, who will make the final tuition decision later this year, said they’d allow.

Adopting the recommendations will mean an extra $127 for in-state students in the coming academic year and $131 in the next. Leaders at UT argue that increases are necessary to avoid immediate cuts to crucial programs.

Not every university in Texas intends to increase tuition next year — the University of Texas at Arlington is a notable example — but it certainly is the trend. And the opposition UT faces from students and others who oppose the price hikes is illustrative of tuition struggles statewide.

Natalie Butler, the UT student body president and a member of the tuition advisory committee, said she hoped the increases would buy the university time to reconsider its approach to funding. “The fact that this current model is not sustainable is not lost on anyone, myself included,” she said.

When the committee’s recommendations were released following a closed-door meeting, many in right-leaning circles that spent much of last year questioning UT’s efficiency and transparency began crying foul. On the conservative Empower Texans blog, writer Will Lutz questioned if the process had violated recent legislative efforts to increase the transparency of the decision-making process regarding student fees. He concluded that while no open-records laws may have been broken, the committee was “ignoring both the intent and spirit” of recent legislation.

UT officials argue that as an advisory body that does not make final decisions on tuition, the committee can meet behind closed doors, allowing members to speak more freely.

Meanwhile, the ostensibly nonpartisan but generally left-leaning members of the nascent Occupy UT movement attended the advisory committee meeting following the announcement of the recommendations to chant their complaints about the proposed increases and the process that led to them.

“We know that this forum is a mere formality,” dozens of students stood up and shouted. “We know that this forum was never a chance to democratically participate in this decision-making process.”

UT President Powers later told the student newspaper The Daily Texan, “I thought the comments were very constructive. It was an interesting theatrical way to make a point. … It doesn’t surprise me that there’s not unanimous agreement on this across the University.”

Trevor Hoag, an assistant instructor at UT and an Occupy UT participant, said — speaking for himself, not the group — that he believes administrators are in “a tight spot” due to state budget cuts. And he said he wants to believe that they are more like-minded than it might seem at first blush. But, Hoag said, “If you’re really standing with us, then what would be the perfect rebuke to the Legislature than to say, ‘You’re going to cut us, but we’re not going to raise tuition. We’re going to buck the trend.’”

The Occupy students’ draft statement catalogs a list of grievances with the university: tuition increases “such that lower- and middle-class students can no longer afford to attend”; students accruing massive student loan debt, “which has led to wide-spread bankruptcy and default”; and an administration that “has leveled no serious rebuke against the legislature of the State of Texas” by demanding the re-regulation of tuition and a return to previous funding levels.

The students also complain that UT has made those decisions, among others, “with practically no democratic input from students, and it will continue to do so until students unite in order to turn the tide.”

Kevin Hegarty, UT’s vice president and chief financial officer, disagreed. He said the opportunities for student involvement in tuition recommendations had increased — the tuition advisory committee held open forums prior to its decision, and several new student budget advisory committees have been established in the last year — but overall student participation had not. “The vast majority of the student body does not seem to want to engage in that particular discussion, but that said, we’ll continue to make the effort,” he said.

Butler, the student body president, agreed, saying she had expected to hear calls to prevent tuition increases at two open advisory committee meetings before the recommendations were finalized. “I was expecting it and didn’t hear it, and that colored my thinking of things,” she said.

Now, the tuition decision rests with the regents, and it’s likely that they will hear opposition from voices on the right and from Occupiers like Hoag, who said, “We just want, if nothing else, manageable student debt.”

Hoag and his compatriots in Occupy UT have big plans. Thus far their strategy has been more event-based, but a physical occupation could be in the works for later in the semester. And they are reaching out to sympathetic groups at other schools, like Texas State University in San Marcos, which has had a small band of occupiers for months.

“Our target is, in some way, to attract others to swell the movement rather than to plead to the masters for more scraps,” Hoag said.

Budget Analysis Documenting the Harm Done in 2011 Legislative Session

CPPP's Budget Analysis Documenting the Harm Done in 2011 Legislative Session:

A new report from the Austin-based Center for Public Policy Priorities updates the damage inventory resulting from state budget cuts forced through the legislature by the governor and legislative leaders last spring and summer. The December 2011 report by analyst Eva DeLuna Castro notes that “the state budget directly eliminates 5,727 public jobs by 2013, while school districts will lose state aid that would have supported 49,000 jobs.” The report further concludes: “After adjusting for inflation, Texas per-student spending will fall to its lowest point in over a decade. The 2012-13 budget assumes that local property taxes will not rise to offset the decrease in state aid.”

Download the full report.

Valley schools in the spotlight

Districts claim state's funding formula unfairly benefits property-rich areas

By NEAL MORTON/The Monitor
December 17, 2011 9:52 PM

Rio Grande Valley school districts have gained significant presence on litigation against the state’s school finance system, which many claim unfairly disadvantages children in poor and minority-heavy areas like the Valley.
Four districts — Harlingen, San Benito, La Feria and McAllen — received major statewide attention this week after filing a third lawsuit against the state with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, or MALDEF.
The strength of that case — led by Edgewood schools, which has won prior lawsuits against the state’s public school funding formulas — lies in the assertion that the current system overwhelmingly harms low-income and English Language Learner, or ELL, students, said MALDEF attorney David Hinojosa.
“The data show they are truly struggling much greater than all other students, and that makes (this lawsuit) much more ripe for a victory for these children,” Hinojosa said.
“This is not a lawsuit our clients wanted to bring,” he added. “It’s a lawsuit we were forced to bring once the state raised (student performance) standards and then cut back on funding, making it even worse than it was before.”
Starting next spring, the state will implement a more rigorous school accountability system, which legislators hoped would raise college readiness when they adopted the new standards two years ago.
However, the Legislature this summer gutted public education by more than $5 billion, a move Hinojosa said stacks the deck against struggling students.
The MALDEF suit piles on state data that show low-income and ELL students — whose numbers are growing within Texas schools — already struggle to meet student performance goals.
For example, the state designated 52 percent of all students as “college-ready graduates” in English Language Arts and Mathematics; just 38 percent and 5 percent of low-income and ELL students, respectively, achieved the same recognition.
And while 26.3 percent of all Texas students completed an advanced or dual enrollment course, just 20.4 percent and 11.6 percent of low-income and ELL students, respectively, enjoyed the same opportunity.
“Districts want their students to be held to more rigorous standards,” Hinojosa said, “but the state can’t get away with upping the ante and not putting its chips on the table. That’s what’s happening here.”
His case also includes a claim found in a lawsuit filed by the Texas Taxpayer and Student Fairness Coalition, which has earned popularity among Valley districts.
According to both groups, the state’s funding formulas inexplicably allocate more money to property-wealthy districts than property-poor districts.
Hinojosa looked directly to the Valley to prove that point: in the wealthy Point Isabel school district, where landowners enjoy a tax rate of just $0.95 per $100 of taxable value, schools collect $5,915 per pupil. However, in McAllen, taxpayers pay $1.17 per $100 of taxable value, and yet their schools draw just $5,088 per pupil — an $827 gap.
Similar disparities abound in the state, and nine Valley districts — including Mercedes and Edinburg schools this past week — have joined the Coalition’s lawsuit to narrow the funding gaps.
And experts expect that the Houston-based Thompson & Horton law firm will soon file a fourth lawsuit against the state, largely arguing the Legislature has effectively set an illegal state property tax.
The Sharyland school board this past week joined that effort, and Superintendent Scott Owings said a mandatory drop in school property taxes limited a community’s ability to provide for their children.
“Local communities had decided how much they wanted to support our schools, then that was taken away from them” by lawmakers in 2006, Owings said. “Now we have to start back over, and if we want to build (the tax rate) up again, there’s a cap at it.”
According to some estimates, more than 200 districts in Texas have a tax rate at a legally allowable cap, which Owings argued robbed them of any “meaningful, local discretion.”
Lawyers and school officials expect litigation to last many months before a court decides the fate of Texas’s school finance system.
But Owings said a growing number of lawsuits and districts joining them should send a strong signal.
“It shows to the state and the courts and Legislature that if you have two-thirds of districts in the state actually suing the state … there’s a lot of power to that,” he said. “Perhaps they’ll think, ‘Maybe we are wrong, if so many districts have taken us to court.’”

Measuring the Impact of Historic Texas Education Cuts

by Morgan Smith | Texas Tribune
December 12, 2011

Since well before the 2011 legislative session began, one question has dominated conversations about the state budget cuts to public education: How will they affect public schools?

There are many answers.

In March, the Texas Education Agency will release the official numbers on school district employment for the 2011-12 school year, including job losses. The figures will be a reckoning in some ways — the first time the state will actually measure the affect of a historic reduction in financing. But several groups, including nonprofit organizations and professional associations, and at least one lawmaker, would like to have a better idea before then — to help shape their own policies and in some cases to be able to control how the discussion is framed.

The Texas American Federation of Teachers, the state branch of the national teachers association, recently released a survey that showed that budget cuts had resulted in widespread layoffs and low morale among public school employees. Linda Bridges, the branch’s president, emphasized the strength of the study’s findings, but because it was an online survey, she said, it was “unscientific” in nature.

The KDK-Harman Foundation, a private nonprofit, is working with Children at Risk, an education advocacy group in Houston, to conduct a comprehensive study on how schools are managing with less money. Jennifer Esterline, the foundation’s executive director, said a lack of both quantitative and qualitative information on the effects of the cuts prompted the study, which was expected to cost just over $100,000.

After a statewide assessment, the study will focus on 25 districts chosen to represent an array of schools. The goal is to determine which programs, employees and other costs they have chosen to eliminate and how that is affecting the classroom.

“It will allow us to get really deep into what are the kinds of decisions superintendents are having to make,” Esterline said, from learning to do more with less to choosing which programs and employees to cut.

Rep. Dan Huberty, R-Houston, decided to canvass the state’s 1,000-plus school districts after he heard that one superintendent in his area had laid off several teachers and then rehired them once final state budget cut numbers came out.

Huberty’s office is not planning to release the results of the survey publicly, said Maggie Irwin, Huberty’s legislative director. It is more of a “self-imposed interim project,” Irwin said, to help shape his understanding of the budget cuts.

Lynn Moak, whose school finance consulting firm, Moak, Casey & Associates, has kept track of job-loss estimates since the start of the session, said the figure of layoffs could vary widely by source, depending on which employees are counted.

For instance, if only teachers are included, it may be a much smaller number than if all employees are included, because many districts are trying to cut everywhere except in the classroom. Moak said that depending on their financial status, districts may face the greater bulk of their budget cuts for the 2011-12 school year — which could cushion the numbers districts report this year.

Moak cautioned against overstating the effect of less money in public education.

“It’d be incorrect to characterize it as a huge impact, except in the concept of what does it mean for the future,” he said. “It means the Legislature can cut and will cut money to public education if the circumstances are right.”

Newsom Stakes a Claim With Student Protests

Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom joined a group of protesters on Monday after they disrupted the University of California Board of Regents meeting in San Francisco and conducted a meeting of their own.

By JENNIFER GOLLAN and GERRY SHIH | NY Times
Published: December 2, 2011

Dozens of chanting protesters disrupted a public meeting of the University of California Board of Regents on Monday, driving all but one of the regents from the room.

“What the hell,” said Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, a regent by virtue of his office, as he flashed a smile and strode past nervous police to mingle with protesters.

While other regents at the meeting in San Francisco huddled behind closed doors or waited at a safe distance on a teleconference call, Mr. Newsom sat forward in his chair, surrounded by students and faculty members railing against a raft of ills: rising tuition, mounting student debt, grim job prospects and accusations of police brutality.

When he finally spoke, Mr. Newsom thanked the protesters for “restoring my faith and confidence in this state and country.” He added, “You have my support.”

And, no doubt, he would like theirs in return.

With the University of California and the California State University systems convulsing over increases in tuition and the ensuing protests at several campuses, Mr. Newsom has staked a position as a populist champion for students, a key part of his base that will be critical if, as expected, he seeks higher office.

“Gavin is speaking from the heart, but it also makes sense for him politically,” said Nathan Ballard, a former press secretary and an aide to Mr. Newsom.

In an interview Thursday, Mr. Newsom said he was deeply alarmed by what he called the dismantling of the U.C. and C.S.U. systems and gently criticized the budget deal struck by Gov. Jerry Brown last year that included steep cuts to financing for both institutions.

“You can’t cut $650 million from both systems and tell me you value the system,” he said. “I believe we could’ve avoided a substantial portion of these cuts.”

He added, “If I were governor, I’d take that as a critique, but I stand by it.”

While Mr. Newsom, 44, has grabbed headlines by criticizing tuition increases and cuts to state spending on education, Governor Brown, a fellow Democrat, has been wrangling for months with the Legislature over a pension overhaul and proposed taxes to help finance education.

Mr. Brown was on vacation last week, and aides had to address criticism that he failed to swiftly address incidents in which campus police used pepper spray and riot batons to quell student protests at Berkeley and U.C. Davis, incidents that were condemned by Mr. Newsom and John A. Pérez, the Assembly speaker and a U.C. regent.

Mr. Newsom told The Sacramento Bee last week that the relationship between a governor and a lieutenant governor was typically “difficult.”

But on Tuesday, Elizabeth Ashford, a spokeswoman for Mr. Brown, said the governor and Mr. Newsom had a “shared concern” over the tuition increases.

“The governor’s position has always been that without additional revenue coming into the state we’re faced with some terrible choices,” she said. “The lieutenant governor is very aware of the very serious fiscal realities that are facing the state.”

Larry N. Gerston, a professor of political science at San Jose State University, said Mr. Brown and Mr. Newsom had fundamentally different aims.

“The easy part is to condemn tuition increases; the harder part is to decide how you’re going to offset those increases with revenue augmentation,” Mr. Gerston said. “Jerry Brown has to be the conductor and make all the pieces come together. Gavin can be a star performer, but he’s just one instrument in a 60- or 70-piece symphony.”

Although Mr. Newsom sees higher education as an issue within his purview as regent, the latitude the governor allows him will be scrutinized because Mr. Newsom has been openly frustrated by the limited scope of his office.

When he briefly ran against Mr. Brown, 73, in the gubernatorial primary last year, Mr. Newsom repeatedly emphasized his youth and questioned the “fire in the belly” of Mr. Brown.

During Mr. Newsom’s campaign for lieutenant governor, “much of Gavin’s support came from the younger generation,” Mr. Ballard said. “He’s certainly speaking to a demographic that will help him in the future.”

In fact, advisers who cultivate Mr. Newsom’s social media presence are quick to note that the majority of his followers on Twitter and those who “like” his Facebook page are young.

Mr. Newsom’s supporters say that he has always backed students’ causes, and that his outspokenness underscores his integrity and his image as an iconoclast.

In 2004, Mr. Newsom riled elders in his party when, as mayor of San Francisco, he issued marriage licenses to same-sex couples despite a state ban.

“He’s always had a ‘damn the political torpedoes’ attitude and a willingness to take on tough issues,” said Peter Ragone, a close political adviser to Mr. Newsom.

As the matter of tuition increases and cuts to education spending has gained prominence nationwide, Mr. Newsom has stocked his official Web site with press releases calling for more transparency around spending decisions.

At Monday’s regents meeting, he declined to sign a petition calling for state lawmakers to close corporate tax loopholes, among other proposed changes in the tax code, but pledged his support for the initiatives.

“I think it’s a lot better than any signature," Mr. Newsom said, adding that he was working with Mr. Brown to devise various changes in tax laws.

Mr. Newsom is not the only U.C. regent to express support for students. On Monday in Los Angeles, for example, Sherry Lansing and Eddie Island met with protesters for 45 minutes after the latter disrupted the regents’ conference-call meeting there. And Ms. Lansing, the board chairwoman, has said she intends to march with student demonstrators in Sacramento early next year to protest cuts in education spending.

But in some ways, the lieutenant governor’s support for the uprising, including students’ demands for higher taxes on the wealthy, may seem like a peculiar undertaking. He recently bought a $2.2 million home in Kentfield, and his business and investment holdings made him the richest of the state’s top elected officials in 2010, according to the most recent financial disclosures available from the California Fair Political Practices Commission.

Some observers, however, say his years in politics have allowed Mr. Newsom to cultivate an unusually approachable demeanor.

“He has a much broader role than the typical regent,” said George Marcus, a U.C. regent who is the founder and chairman of Marcus & Millichap, one of the largest commercial real estate brokerage firms in the country. “He is much more accustomed to dealing with different groups of people. Some regents are more inclined to interact with students than others.”

John Vigna, a spokesman for Mr. Pérez, said Mr. Newsom was casting himself as a liaison between the students and the regents, who are under intense scrutiny.

“I think that he does have a needle to thread here,” Mr. Vigna said. “The risk is you identify the problem and never figure out what the solution is.”

Texas Schools Face New Rules on Financial Hardship

This history behind this legislation is sickening.

-Patricia

by Morgan Smith | Texas Tribune
11/23/2011

The Texas Education Agency has released new guidelines that set tough thresholds for school districts hoping to take advantage of special legal exemptions passed by the Legislature and intended to help schools cope with significant budget cuts.

A school district's declaration of “financial exigency” is necessary to trigger many provisions of Senate Bill 8, including those that allow districts to streamline mid-contract employee terminations and avoid seniority-based layoffs in certain circumstances. The law, passed during the special session, left it up to the Commissioner of Education to establish a minimum standard for such declarations, which were previously largely in the hands of local school boards.

The rules released Wednesday give several scenarios that allow districts to claim financial exigency — but they are so rigorous that it’s likely that only a small number of districts will actually meet the any of the standards, says Jackie Lain, an associate executive director at the Texas Association of School Boards. The conditions include a funding reduction of more than 10 percent per student or more than a 20 percent decrease in its fund balance.

To put that in perspective, the $4 billion reduction to public education funding during the past legislative session has most districts seeing a 6 percent cut during the first year of the biennium and not more than a 9 percent cut in the second year. Districts vary widely in how much they've used of their fund balances, which amount to emergency savings accounts.

"Before SB8 there weren’t any standards for declaring financial exigency and the bill required the commissioner to adopt minimum standards," says Janice Hollingsworth, who is the interim director of the agency's financial audit division.

Among the other conditions are a decline in enrollment by more than 10 percent over the past two years, an unforeseen natural disaster requiring significant expenditures in excess of 15 percent of a district’s yearly budget, and “any other circumstances approved in writing” by the commissioner of education. Hollingsworth says the commissioner maintained some discretion to anticipate any unforeseen circumstances the other conditions didn't account for.

What the new guidelines mean in practice, says Lain, is that districts may be forced to go through more expensive processes to lay off employees, whose salaries typically make up about 80 percent of their annual budgets, instead of being able to take advantage of the more efficient practices lawmakers approved during the session.

“The thresholds seem to be overly high without any explanations,” Lain says. “How the commissioner uses the discretion will determine if the rules are overly prescriptive, or properly restrictive.”

The TEA will have a period of public comment on the rules. Hollingsworth says they are "subject to change" depending on the feedback the agency receives.

IDRA Visits Valley to Explain School Finance Litigation

Great piece on the Fair Funding Now Campaign Roundtables. Dr. Albert Cortez has been a leader in school finance since the early 1980s.

Please check out the website for more information on this effort as well as the amazing tools that allow you to weigh in on how the budget cuts are impacting your district and public schools.

-Patricia

Albert Cortez, of the Intercultural Development Research Association, speaks at a roundtable in Alamo on Saturday. (Photo: RGG/Steve Taylor)

By Steve Taylor | Rio Grande Guardian

ALAMO, Oct. 29 - The Intercultural Development Research Association held a roundtable on school funding equity in Texas at La Quinta Inn in Alamo on Saturday.

Among those in attendance were representatives from La Unión del Pueblo Entero, Project ARISE, Proyecto Azteca, Equal Voice for America’s Families, LULAC, the University of Texas-Pan American, and Pharr-San Juan-Alamo ISD.

Albert Cortez, director of policy for IDRA, explained how litigation was proceeding to improve equity in public school finance. This litigation is necessary, Cortez said, because some school districts are getting $1,000 less per pupil. “About half the school districts in the state are going to be suing the State over the funding system,” Cortez explained, during a power point presentation.

There are roughly 1,100 school districts in Texas. About 500 different districts are being represented in the litigation by four different groups. The two groups providing most assistance to Rio Grande Valley school districts, Cortez said, are the Equity Center and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Both of these are concerned about equity, with the Equity Center, for the purposes of the litigation, setting up a group known as the Texas Taxpayer and Student Fairness Coalition. This coalition has about 300 districts signed up, including PSJA ISD and Rio Hondo ISD. PSJA Superintendent Danny King was present at the roundtable.

Cortez said MALDEF is a key player because of its history in fighting for school finance equity. He pointed out the group took the lead in the famous Edgewood case of 1973, known as Rodriguez v. San Antonio ISD. Cortez said MALDEF would be looking for a smaller subset of school districts, parents and students to help its cause when the case goes to court. He said he expects MALDEF’s petition to be filed early next month.

In addition to the Equity Center and MALDEF, there will be two other groups involved in the litigation with different interests, Cortez said. The rich school districts will be trying to get authority from the Texas Supreme Court to expand the funding gap between rich and poor districts. Meanwhile, the large, urban, districts will be fighting over adequacy, not equity, Cortez said, by making the point that the State of Texas does not provide enough funding.

Cortez said the litigation approach of Equity Center and MALDEF is compatible. “We think the data is on our side,” he explained. “In Edgewood I the state said if a district makes the same tax effort as another district, they should get the same amount of money. The Supreme Court upheld that principle. Under the current system there is no connection between the tax effort PSJA makes and how much money it gets. It can make the same tax effort as a rich district, or greater, and get $1,000 less per pupil.”

Cortez pointed out that after the last round of litigation against the State of Texas, known as the Orange Grove case of 2006, school districts had to be allowed some ability to raise extra funding to supplement local programs. Back then, about 100 districts were “maxed out” at the $1.17 per $100 property valuation. Now the number is more than 200, Cortez said. “Even if they want to raise more money they are locked in. They cannot do any better than they are doing,” he said. So, in effect, an unconstitutional statewide property tax was now in place, Cortez said.

Cortez said he expects the school finance trial to take place late summer or early fall, 2012. A ruling may not come until the following spring, right in the middle of the 2013 legislative session. He concluded his remarks by saying that once the school funding system is ruled unconstitutional, the voices of Rio Grande Valley communities will need to be raised in order to get state lawmakers to fix the equity gap and provide adequate resources for school districts.

In an interview with the Guardian after his presentation Cortez said the impact of some school districts getting $1,000 per student less was enormous. “We have done the math and you are talking about over half a million dollars in a campus of 20 classrooms,” Cortez said. “That creates tremendous differences in what school districts can provide to their children. We have never believed the quality of a child’s education should depend on what neighborhood they live in. We have a situation where there is a subgroup of districts that have a tremendous advantage.”

Cortez said that during the last legislative session, IDRA was trying to get school funding distributed a little fairer, so the students who were getting significantly less would get the programs and support they needed. “There was a great reluctance to share the wealth,” he said.

Asked how much the Valley lost because of school funding cuts last session, Cortez said it was in the region of $134 to $150 million. He said the Valley has about half a million students in public education, which is about ten percent of the total in Texas. “The half a million in the Valley has a tremendous impact for the State. If we talk about economic development for the Valley, how can you have your dreams of economic development when you are not providing those communities with the resources they need to produce the workforce?” he said.

Cortez said that in a way the Valley represents the canary in the mine. “So the Valley goes, so goes Texas. The Valley looks like what the rest of Texas will look like. State leaders need to realize that this is a vital part of Texas. You are one of the lynchpins. If we do not do well by the Valley we do not do well by Texas. The leadership does not make the connection we are all inter-connected. If we do not educate our children in the south of Texas, the whole state changes, because of mobility,” Cortez said.

Aurelio Montemayor, senior education associate for IDRA, said he hoped his group’s extensive research would be used by school districts in the Valley to help mobilize support for a more equitable school finance system. “Use the hell out of all these materials. Have the superintendents come together and say, look how you got hit,” he said.

Prop 6 Would Change Texas Constitution on School Funds

Texas lawmakers passed a budget this year that cut $4 billion dollars from K-12 public education. As negotiations on those cuts came to a boil during the legislative session, there were also efforts to figure out how to squeeze additional money out of other funds to help cushion the budget blow. That's where state Rep. Rob Orr, R-Burleson, and a few other lawmakers came in with what became Proposition 6.

Orr said it was needed because the state's school land trust fund, which includes oil and gas revenues, had ballooned while payments to public schools had not.

"That fund had grown to over two and a half billion dollars in cash. But very little of it was getting directly to education," Orr said, "so this was a way for the General Land Office to make a direct deposit to the available school fund."

If passed, the constitutional amendment would allow the land commissioner to send no more than $300 million each year to spend in the state's public education budget. The measure passed the House and Senate unanimously, but some have worried it would allow the land commissioner to transfer more than the fund generated. That could weaken the fund and limit its ability to keep up with inflation.

But Orr said that shouldn't happen. "Income coming in over the last 15 years, when you look at it on an annual basis, it's been generating about $500 million a year," Orr said, "and there's a cap of $300 million. And so the fund will keep growing even if the General Land Office sends up to the $300 million."

There's nothing keeping a land commissioner from continuing to transfer $300 million even if the fund generates less. But Orr said that if that happened, the commissioner would have to answer to voters for those actions.

Early voting ends Friday. Election Day is Nov. 8.

Survey: More cuts to school jobs expected next year

By Kate Alexander | Austin American-Statesman
Tuesday, November 1, 2011, 11:51 AM

More than 60 percent of Texas school districts expect further staffing reductions next year as they grapple with state budget reductions, according to a survey by school finance consultant Moak, Casey & Associates.

Almost 9,600 school district jobs — one-third of which were classroom teachers — were eliminated this year by the survey respondents, which serve 39 percent of the state’s students. If those job cuts were applied across the state, there would be 32,000 fewer school employees in Texas, including 12,000 fewer teachers.

That number is much, much smaller than the 100,000 school jobs that consultant Lynn Moak estimated would be lost when the 2012-13 budget was first released in January. At that point, lawmakers proposed reducing per-student funding by $10 billion and eliminating almost $2 billion in education grants.

In the end, the Legislature underfunded schools by $4 billion in basic aid and cut $1.3 billion from grant programs that paid for full-day prekindergarten, assisted students struggling to pass state standardized tests and more.

But more jobs are expected to be lost next because schools are relying on some one-time federal money to prop up their budgets this year and some districts will lose additional state aid next year, the school districts report.

School Dropouts Save Texas Money But Only in Short Term

As awful as this sounds the state does seem to be led by the notion that "dropouts save money". This is supported by historical patterns of students lost in the education pipeline (3 million over the course of 25 years).

Check out the Intercultural Development Research Association's (IDRA) data on dropout and attrition rates in Texas.

-Patricia

by Ross Ramsey | Texas Tribune
October 28, 2011

Every time a student drops out of public school, taxpayers save money. That’s one fewer student, at an annual savings of more than $11,000 per year from state and local sources.

You might argue those kids will cost the state a lot of money someday, either as prison inmates, welfare recipients, or as part of an expanding number of weak links in the labor chain when employers come looking for educated workers.

But the immediate result is that the dropouts save money. And politicians respond to immediate things. Not to kick anyone in particular, but when was the last time you saw a Texas governor or legislator with a 10-year plan? A five-year plan?

When the economy is bad and the favored political trope is no new taxes, no new spending, budgeting is a short-term exercise. Lawmakers stop talking about new programs and such, focusing instead on voters’ demands to keep government as inexpensive as possible. The punishment for doing anything else is as close as the March primary.

The dropout problem has a longer fuse. The reward for fixing it is somewhere in the future, way past the next election.

The public schools are on a 13-year clock, starting with kindergarten and ending with the fourth year of high school. The budgeteers are on a two-year clock that starts and ends in even-numbered years. Their horizons are determined by the election calendar. Politicians are actually pretty responsive. They react to the things that will hurt them, politically, and to the things that will help them, politically. And the judgments they’re concerned with are those delivered by voters.

In fact, there is a disincentive to fix the dropout problem, because it would force lawmakers to make cuts in other parts of the budget or to find new revenue. It sets up like something from the science fair: Suppose you got 181 lab rats and gave them cheese if they saved money and threw them out into the streets if they spent it.

Dropout rates don’t initially look like a budget issue, but if you could wave a wand and end it today — keeping every student in school for the full 13 years — you’d be spending a lot of money. You would be a street rat.

How many dropouts are there? That’s a political fight, to some extent, for another day. But for illustration, go with these numbers, courtesy of the Texas Education Agency: In the 2008-09 school year, 40,923 students in grades 7 through 12 dropped out of school, and in the 2009-10 school year, 34,907 students dropped out. Total spending per student in the 2009-2010 school year was $11,567, including capital spending (operating expenditures per student — the total cost per student excluding buildings, computers and the like — were $8,572 per year).

The state pays school districts according to attendance. If fewer students show up, the state spends less.

Based on total spending, it would cost state and local taxpayers $473.4 million annually to educate that first group of dropouts. The second group would add $403.8 million to the annual nut. Only want the operating costs? That would be $650 million per year.

Since Texas has a two-year budget, and the state’s share of operations is about 43 percent of the total, that particular set of dropouts "saves" the state about $560 million every two years.

Keep in mind that the numbers are based on a two-year sampling of dropouts from six grades — 7 through 12 — and that adding dropouts over time at least doubles the number and could triple it. And remember that the number of dropouts is a matter of some dispute and that these numbers could be low.

The point here is that the policy problem of kids dropping out of school is actually a boon to budget writers if the budget writers are in a bind. It’s money they don’t have to produce at a time when government revenue is in higher-than-normal demand.

It’s a variation on Jonathan Swift’s "Modest Proposal". We’re not eating the children to save money on their welfare — just letting them out of school early.

Facility plans, school finance lawsuits on Austin trustees' agenda

By Laura Heinauer and Melissa Taboada | AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday, Oct. 23, 2011

At tonight's meeting of the Austin school board, trustees are set to vote on suing the State of Texas over education funding and on approving tax reappraisals of property damaged in wildfires earlier this year.

But discussions on facility planning could overshadow those and other agenda items.

At forums in the past several days, district officials released some of the most concrete proposals yet on recommendations for the use of schools and other buildings during the 2012-13 school year. Tonight's public comment session and a public hearing Tuesday will give the community a chance to present thoughts about the proposals.

Under plans announced Thursday, the district would create up to three district-managed charter campuses in the part of town that includes the Eastside Memorial High Schools at the former Johnston High School campus and schools that feed into Eastside. The IDEA Public School, a charter school, would have autonomy over academic programs, but the campuses would still be overseen by the district.

Earlier, district administrators said that they were looking at dealing with crowding in North Austin by moving the sixth grade out of Barrington, Brown and Walnut Creek elementary schools and adding a pre-kindergarten center at Dobie Middle School. One of three other options would reassign students at Ridgetop Elementary School, which would then become a dual language center for pre-kindergartners.

The district hopes the overall changes would strengthen schools in East Austin and free up space at overcrowded schools in the north. Under one long-range scenario, Brooke Elementary School in East Austin would no longer serve students after 2015.

The idea of moving the sixth grade from elementary schools is not new. Austin has just a handful of elementary schools that still have a sixth grade.

Many educators and researchers say that sixth-graders are psychologically and physically close to seventh- and eighth-graders. However some studies have shown that sixth-grade middle school students are more likely to be cited for discipline problems. Researchers have also found that elementary school sixth-graders have higher test scores than those in middle school.

Last year, when the Austin district kept sixth-graders who would have attended the struggling Pearce Middle School in their elementary schools an extra year, test scores shot up, officials said.

Moving the sixth grade to middle school would relieve crowding and "provide our sixth-graders with the full middle school experience," Austin chief of staff Paul Cruz said, explaining that sixth-graders in elementary schools don't get the middle school options of band, foreign languages and athletics.

The district first looked at creating an in-district charter school in 2001 with proposals from KIPP and Edison schools but ultimately backed off. The district is now ready to embrace the unconventional, officials say.

"I think it's time for Austin parents to have a choice," said Ramona Treviño, the district's chief academic officer. Something that offers " a proven track record of success in college preparation with high-poverty, Hispanic children," she said.

The school board aims to vote on a 2012-13 facilities plan in December. But some of the early recommendations are already under fire from a few people who could be affected.

About 200 people attended Thursday's presentation. One student, angered by a proposal that would house the charter school at Eastside, was in tears as he tried to express his concerns and briefly left the room.

Upon returning, 17-year-old Eddie Perez made his point: "You're not giving us a chance. Every year you're doing something different. If you choose one of those plans and it doesn't work, then in 2015-16, are you going to have another plan for the school? Are you going to do that yearly? Are you actually thinking about us?"

Similar sentiments were echoed across town.

Annette Lucksinger, a Ridgetop parent, said that by making the campus a pre-kindergarten the district would be turning its back on a dual language program that parents have committed to and is working. Enrollment is now up from 180 to almost 300 in two years, she said, and the school community is stronger than ever.

"This is my fourth year at the school — my third year to have to fight to keep it open — and it's frustrating having to put so much energy into saving the school again rather than trying to make it better," she said. "We're going strong and in a positive direction, and if you transplant us, that will all be lost."

Cruz said some parents will appreciate the plan because it allows siblings to stay together. He said studies show that students do better with fewer transitions. Combining Ridgetop with Reilly also would "provide a larger dual language school, making it a really enhanced option for dual language immersion," he said.

lheinauer@statesman.com; 445-3694

mtaboada@statesman.com; 445-3620

Austin school board meeting

Tonight's meeting, at the Carruth Administration Center, 1111 W. Sixth St., will start at 7. Highlights from the agenda:

Administrators recommend that the board OK the reappraisal of property damaged in the Oak Hill wildfire in April. Values would be prorated from the date of the fire and would affect the 2011 tax roll, for which payment is due in January.

Trustees could vote to join one of multiple lawsuits expected over the state's school finance system. Administrators said in agenda documents that the district should join in suing because ‘the current system of school finance in Texas fails to address growth. Not only does it fail to fund growth in student population, it fails to meet the increasing needs of higher expectations and more rigorous standards required by the State and the increase in student needs such as poverty and limited English proficiency.'

Administrators are asking the board to approve contracts with Princeton Review and Catapult Learning for math tutoring services for sixth- and ninth-grade students at Burnet Middle School and Lanier High School. The estimated cost is $1.6 million.

Districts struggle this year with class sizes

Real talk on what it means when the state doesn't consider growth in its funding of education.

-Patricia

By Laura Heinauer | AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Thursday, Oct. 20, 2011

For many students, the start of the school year has meant sharing tight quarters. For others, it has meant getting used to one new teacher and then another .

Budget-tightening moves, coupled with a promise by the Texas Education Agency to be more lenient in granting waivers on state rules capping class sizes, have made for, at times, a chaotic start of the school year for many families.

Two months after school began, some students are still being shuffled around as districts try to get below the cap — 22 students per class in kindergarten to fourth grade.

State lawmakers debated, but didn't approve, changing the cap in this year's legislative session.

"It has been really tough on all of us," said Dora Trevino, a teacher at Harris Elementary School in East Austin.

She started the year with 28 students, then 24 and had as many as 30 at one point. The district just hired a new teacher, and now Trevino has 21 children in her fourth-grade class.

"I thought I had it under control" at 28, she said. "But when it got up to 30, it came with behavior problems and low academics. ... It was a lot of stress and work at home and overwhelming, but I just said, 'It's going to be OK. We're going to see this year through .'"

The Leander school district, which increased its student-teacher ratios to cut costs, went from asking for waivers for eight classes in 2010-11 to 95 so far this year.

Karie Lynn McSpadden , the district's assistant superintendent for human resources, said the reason there are so many more waivers this year, compared with some districts, is that Leander set its caps a little higher — 23 for second grade and 24 for third and fourth grades — expecting that it would not exceed those numbers and use contingency funds to hire more teachers if needed.

"I think at the end of the year, we will end up with lower class sizes than the districts around us," McSpadden said.

To reduce Austin's need for waivers, Michael Houser, the district's chief resources officer, said the district aggressively moved staff members and hired 90 more teachers this fall. He said the new hires cost about $750,000, which came out of the anticipated savings from the layoffs that the board approved earlier in the year.

"This year, it became more of a problem in that we did staff at 24 to 1," he said, explaining how the district had thought the law would change. "We were pretty much assured that would happen, and when it didn't in June, we decided that we would go back and spend some money and back fill these positions as needed."

Austin officials said the district has applied for 18 waivers this year, compared with two at this time in 2010-11.

That's much fewer than some districts, particularly some urban ones. State officials said they expect the Houston school district to apply for more than 1,000 waivers.

Meanwhile, the Round Rock school district has managed to decrease the number of overcrowded classes. Spokeswoman JoyLynn Occhiuzzi said the district slightly increased its staffing ratios and transferred teachers to other schools and grades when necessary.

"At the end of the day, we had to hire 217 teachers due to attrition and growth, which is pretty much what our norm would be," she said.

Texas Education Agency spokeswoman Debbie Ratcliffe said that, this year, the agency is granting waivers based on financial hardship. The agency anticipates more than 6,500 classes across Texas will exceed the cap this fall — almost triple the 2,238 classes in the 2010-11 school year, she said.

"We're going to be looking closely before granting them at schools that were rated unacceptable," Ratcliffe said, referring to the lowest mark a school can get in the state's academic accountability system. "It was too late to do it this year. But next year, we're probably going to ask for additional details."

Many Central Texas classrooms that received waivers this year exceed class size limits by just one or two students, according to information provided by area districts.

Research on the impact of smaller classes on student learning is mixed, though generally, teachers and parents prefer the smaller class sizes.

"Any parent who's had kids that age can appreciate what adding two 5-year-olds to a class could do to that dynamic," said state Rep. Mark Strama, D-Austin, adding that he is concerned about student learning and teacher morale.

Rae Nwosu, president of Education Austin, a labor group that represents about 4,000 Austin school district employees, said morale has suffered in Austin.

"It's not about having the extra students — though space does become an issue when you try to crowd so many students in a classroom that wasn't built to handle that," Nwosu said. "The biggest problem is the extra work ... on top of already having the additional students.

"Morale is low, and I don't understand why our trustees don't see this and why they haven't said something to the superintendent."

For her part, Trevino seems to be taking things in stride .

"I'm hoping (class enrollment) will stay at 21, but if it increases, I am still going to teach," Trevino said. "I'm still going to be positive, and I am still going to do everything I can for these kids, because this is what I love to do."